May 4 marks Youth Day in China in memory of the “May Fourth Movement” in 1919. The May Fourth Movement was an important cultural and political moment in modern Chinese history in which many of China’s leading young people rose up against imperialism and promoted democracy and science.
On this year’s Youth Day, follow China Plus to learn about a few young Chinese leaders in innovation and science.
Born in 1991, Dai Wei, a cycling lover, founded bike-sharing platform Ofo in 2014 when he was studying at Peking University for his master’s degree. Created to help promote convenient and environmentally-friendly travel, Ofo has expanded to more than 250 cities in 20 countries around the world.
Dai was listed in Fortune China’s “40 Under 40 Business Elite” and Forbes “30 Under 30 Asia” in 2017. With a personal fortune of 3.5 billion yuan (553 million U.S. dollar), Dai was ranked the 1,214th richest person in China by the Hurun Research Institute in October 2017.
Inspired by his experience spending a year volunteering as a teacher in Qinghai Province, Dai has also devoted himself to improving education and alleviating poverty in west China.
Cheng Wei launched taxi-hailing app Didi Dache in 2012 when he was 29 years old, after he had spent eight years working at e-commerce giant Alibaba.
Didi Dache merged with its domestic rival Kuaidi Dache in 2015, a few months later the company took on its current name. In August 2016, Didi Chuxing acquired Uber’s China operation. The company is now the world’s largest ride-hailing company serving over 450 million users globally.
In May 2017, Cheng Wei and Jean Liu, the President of Didi Chuxing, were ranked No. 5 on Time magazine’s “20 Most Influential People in Tech Right Now”. Cheng was ranked the 189th richest person in China list by the Hurun Research Institute in October 2017, with a personal fortune of 16.5 billion yuan (2.6 billion U.S. dollars).
Liu Mingzhen, professor at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Liu Mingzhen is a professor with University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC). She was appointed vice president of the School of Materials and Energy at the university in January.
Born in 1990, Liu received her master’s degree at the University of Cambridge, and her PhD at Oxford University. An expert in materials science, she is best known for a paper on perovskite solar cells that was published in 2013 in Nature, one of the world’s leading academic journals. Her paper has since been cited more than 3,000 times.
Liu returned to China in 2015 to become a professor at UESTC after being included in China’s Recruitment Program of Global Experts, a national program aiming to attract more overseas talents. In 2016, Liu led the establishment of the applied chemistry research center at the university.
Zhang Xuhao is the founder of ele.me, one of China’s largest meal ordering and delivery services. The 35-year-old entrepreneur started the company with several friends in 2009 when they were postgraduate students at Shanghai Jiaotong University.
In the company’s early days, Zhang and his business partners had to hit the road to help deliver food to their customers. Now, less than a decade later, the company has around 260 million users in over 2,000 cities across China, and employs more than one million delivery drivers.
Last month, e-commerce giant Alibaba signed a 9.5 billion U.S. dollars deal to buy the company. The acquisition deal will see Zhang Xuhao become chairman of ele.me and a special advisor to Alibaba’s CEO on New Retail strategy.
